Friday 11 September 2009 19.01 EDT
First published on Friday 11 September 2009 19.01 EDT

Modern literature begins rather earlier than you might expect, in the third and fourth decades of the 19th century: in Scotland with James Hogg, in Germany with Georg Büchner and in Russia with Lermontov. Well, not "modern literature" exactly, but in Lermontov, at least, we see the first real anti-hero.

For those who have an idea of the Russian novel as an enormous beast filled with confusing numbers of characters all called Prince Something and Princess Something else, to the point where you feel you need an index to keep even a vague track of what's going on, A Hero of Our Time will make a refreshing change. It's well under 200 pages long and comes with a well-pruned cast of characters, and although there are three different narrators, the whole thing is perfectly graspable, makes its point quickly and without beating about the bush, and exits without outstaying its welcome.

Here is its point: the creation of the bored, cynical, rootless Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin. Lermontov has him approach us sideways, so to speak, first through the reminiscences of a veteran staff captain serving in the Caucasus. We then meet him fleetingly and directly, and finally via his own diaries, which themselves end almost, you feel, in the middle of the story, as if Lermontov had simply thought: "That's it, I'm off," and put down his pen.

Or been shot. Lermontov's life was not too distant from that of his creation: he also served as an officer in the Caucasus, got into romantic scrapes and lost his life in a duel. (The front cover of the book, with rather grim wit, shows a portrait of Lermontov riddled with bullet-holes.) Not that Lermontov is to be confused with his hero - "that sorry old ruse!" was how he dismissed those who did so.

But Pechorin is certainly a version of Lermontov, a hardened version, let us say - someone who could manipulate the hearts of women seemingly at will, or who could cheerfully go to a rigged duel. "So? If I die, then I die! The loss to the world won't be great. Yes, and I'm fairly bored with myself already. I am like a man who is yawning at a ball, whose reason for not going to bed is only that his carriage hasn't arrived yet. But the carriage is ready ... farewell!"

The joke here is that the story is anything but boring. In fact, Lermontov goes out of his way to make life interesting for his hero. We are presented with the abduction of a Tatar princess, adventures with smugglers (also involving a beautiful woman), a fight with a fellow soldier over another woman, ending in a duel, and a story involving brutal, drunken murder.

But it's the character of Pechorin we find so intriguing. The translator, in her introduction, calls him "dislikeable", but I wouldn't say that. He may have regrettable traits, and he is a menace to himself and those around him, but dislikeable is the last thing he is. "Perhaps several readers will want to know my opinion of Pechorin's character?" asks Lermontov's narrator before the diaries begin. "My reply is the title of this book. 'What vicious irony!' they will say. I don't know." Those last three words beautifully encapsulate the ambiguity of the work. Lermontov's own foreword says the book is "a portrait composed of the flaws of our whole generation in their fullest development," and goes so far as to use the word "nasty" to describe Pechorin, but the truth about him is better told within the novel, when he is described by one of the women whose hearts he breaks (I suspect, incidentally, that it was as revenge for having his own heart broken that Lermontov wrote the book in the first place): "But there is something in your nature that is special, that belongs to you alone ... No one is capable of wanting to be loved as much as you. Evil is not as attractive in anyone but you, no one's gaze promises as much bliss, no one is able to use their advantages better, and no one can be as sincerely unhappy as you, because no one strives as much to convince himself of the contrary."